Vice President Joseph R. Biden said Democratic presidential candidates in 2016 should embrace President Obama’s economic policies and “run on what we have done” instead of running away from the administration. “In my view, those seeking to lead the nation should protect and defend and run, yes run, on what we’ve done and own what we have done,” Mr. Biden said in a speech in Des Moines, Iowa. “Stand for what we have done. Acknowledge what we have done. And be judged on what we have done, if we have any chance for continued resurgence in 2016.” He added, “Some...

So what does President Obama do when no one’s around? President Obama made a BuzzFeed video: Things Everybody Does But Doesn't Talk About How did we get Obama to use a selfie stick? Oh, because he wants you to go to https://www.healthcare.gov/. Share · 174,46416,000128,980

Americans’ views of President Barack Obama have improved slightly in the past two months, and opinions are more positive about the direction of the country and the health of the economy, an Associated Press-GfK poll finds. A slim majority now approves of the way Obama is handling unemployment, according to the poll, conducted before Friday’s release of a surprisingly strong jobs report. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed approve of how Obama is doing his job, compared with 41 percent in December, and 51 percent approve of his handling of unemployment, compared with 44 percent before. Nearly half say the economy...

"We're as free of foreign oil as we've been in 30 years," Obama said. "We've doubled the amount of clean energy that we're producing. A lot of families are saving a lot of money at the gas pump, which is putting some smiles on folks' faces." "You're welcome," Obama said to tepid applause.

Ted Cruz claims to be a “constitutionalist,” but expects us to believe that the issue of gay marriage should be left to “debate…in the legislative chambers.” In response to President Barack Obama’s comments about gay marriage in the State of the union, the Texas senator said: I think the proper place to debate those issues is in the legislative chambers. I’m a constitutionalist…From the beginning of this country, marriage has been a question of the states, and we should not have the federal government, or unelected judges, setting aside the policy judgment of the elected legislatures and imposing their own...

Last year, government scientists tell us, was the hottest year on record. This news is terribly — what's the word? — inconvenient. No, not for polar bears or drought victims or coastal dwellers. It's inconvenient for politicians across the country who, despite whatever data or overwhelming scientific consensus might be proffered, insist on denying global warming. In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students "clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the...

Just saw a local Miami tv station using video from the government web site with an "interview" of Obama, where he spews some crap about how his goal is to outline for the nation how he is going to make sure things are fair, now that we have "made it through the crisis". I nearly spit my coffee out. We are not out of a crisis. My point is that these kind of videos are NOT a proper use for news....and I expect that if a REPUBLICAN president put out this type of "interview", the media would ignore it....on the...

The negative impact plastic is having on our oceans has been widely documented. Billions of pounds of plastic can be found on our beaches and in the oceans and 80 percent of the plastic pollution enters the ocean from the land. In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day. For the surfing community, and the world, the war on plastic is an ongoing battle, and it’s one that we’re losing. We are drowning in plastic and sustainable efforts need to be implemented and supported...

Newsweek magazine decided to greet the start of 2015 with a massive cover story on the Bible. For decades now, major newsmagazines have tended to feature cover articles timed for Christmas and Easter, taking an opportunity to consider some major question about Christianity and the modern world. Leading the journalistic pack for years, both TIME and Newsweek dedicated cover article after article, following a rather predictable format. In the main, scholars or leaders from very liberal quarters commented side-by-side those committed to historic Christianity on questions ranging from the virgin birth to the resurrection of Christ. When written by journalists...

A number of private security researchers are increasingly voicing doubts that the hack of Sony‘s computer systems was the work of North Korea. President Obama and the F.B.I. last week accused North Korea of targeting Sony and pledged a “proportional response” just hours before North Korea’s Internet went dark without explanation. But security researchers remain skeptical, with some even likening the government’s claims to those of the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war. Fueling their suspicions is the fact that the government based its findings, in large part, on evidence that it will not release, citing the...

Why do people in the United States (and probably other Western countries, as well) over-estimate the proportion of gays and lesbians in the population? Ever since 1948, when theÂ Kinsey ReportÂ suggestedÂ 1-in-10, Americans have accepted wildly exaggerated figures. Last year,Â The Smithsonian, the official web magazine of the famous museum in Washington DC, even suggested that it was 1-in-5!However, aÂ recent government surveyÂ in the United Kingdom found that in 2013, 1.6% of UK adults identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual. This is a very small proportion of the population, but it becomes even smaller when the figures are broken up. Only 1.6% of men...

Former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday noted that previous U.S. presidents have issued some type of executive order on immigration, suggesting his Democratic successor was on “pretty firm legal ground.” The former president spoke on the eve of President Barack Obama’s scheduled announcement of executive actions to spare as many as 5 million immigrants from being deported from the U.S. Clinton said during an event honoring the magazine The New Republic that it was part of a larger debate about the nation’s role around the globe. “As far as I can tell, every president in the modern era has issued...

The University of Pennsylvania which had originally posted this has now pulled down the video from their site. But this is an attempt on the part of Jonathan Gruber and company to pull their pants up after they got caught. I think it's comical that these people still believe they can say whatever they want in public, but then flip out if anyone quotes them. It also appears that the Snopes.com mafia has been called in to cast doubt upon the incident as conservatives have reported it. They call this claim a Mixture of true and false. Here's their lame...

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. … So it’s written to do that,” Gruber said, suggesting “it would not have passed” if the law “made it explicit” that healthy people would “pay in” and the sick would get money. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber continued. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass. I wish...

Messaging Matters in an email I received | October 25, 2014 | Liberal Idiots

Living with a cat for the first time, you quickly pick up on its behavioral quirks, many of which are common among other cats. What you soon find out is that cats aren't Republican. Here are 12 reasons why not: 1. Cats are curious about what you do in your bedroom, but they don't try to legislate away your freedom to do it. 2. Cats may take away your cushion, but they'll give it back to you with a gentle push. 3. Cats give you attention and sympathy when you're sick. 4. Females are treated with importance in the...

Fifty years ago, on Sept. 7, 1964, a political ad called “Daisy” aired on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson. The commercial opened with a little girl in a meadow, then a horrific nuclear blast filled the screen. We’ve been feeling the fallout ever since. It was only a minute long. The paid ad ran on national television only once, and only on one network, NBC. But that’s all it took.

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. ... “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda [?], and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant said. ... “Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority. ... The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use...

A new campaign advertisement from U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, criticizing his Republican opponent's pro-life stance, features a mother holding her young daughter and saying the child is the reason abortion should remain legal. As a female narrator criticizes Republican Congressman Cory Gardner’s "history [of] supporting harsh anti-abortion laws,” the camera cuts to a dark-haired woman holding a girl, who appears to be less than 10 years old, on her lap. “I want my daughter to have the same choices I do,” she says. The narrator also references “Gardner's eight year crusade that would ban birth control.” “Seriously?” a woman says....

The political arm of the Planned Parenthood abortion business says it will spend as much as $3 million in Texas to elect pro-abortion gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and other pro-abortion candidates. Cecile Richards, the president of America’s biggest abortion corporation was in the Lone State State to push her plan. Cecile Richards, president of the national advocacy group Planned Parenthood Votes, said the effort aims to draw differences between Democrat Wendy Davis and Republican Greg Abbott, the state attorney general, in the campaign for governor. wendydavis12“When women have a chance to know the difference between candidates, they won’t vote for...

One may have believed that the revocation of an esteemed award from human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Brandeis University was the lowest level the school could stoop in kowtowing to fascist, racist influences among Brandeis faculty. Yet one would be wrong. In an all-new bombshell uncovered by Brandeis student Daniel Mael, an entire listserv used by Brandeis professors and teachers has been leaked to the public. This email list, entitled “Concerned” contains several exchanges between professors bashing conservatives, Jews, Christians, and anyone who views America as a force for good in this world.Donald Hindley, professor of comparative politics...

“I happen to believe in [the] refugee program, not just because Jesus was a refugee -- because I was also myself a refugee,” said Negash, who was named to his post by the Obama administration in 2009. “Yes I was once described as an alien myself, if that’s a proper term to use,” Negash said.

Wholesale retailer Costco announced Tuesday evening that they have reversed a decision to remove conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s bestselling book from stores, following an outcry from thousands of angry customers. “Costco is not a book store. Our book shelf space is very limited,” a statement posted on Facebook said. “We exercise discipline in the best utilization of that limited space based solely on what our members are buying. We can’t carry every title that our members are interested in reading. We are constantly monitoring book sales, and make decisions to pull books off the shelves frequently based on sales volume...

There is a scandal going on at the Internal Revenue Service, but it has nothing to do with Lois Lerner or her missing emails. No, the real scandal is what Republicans did to cripple the agency when virtually no one was looking. Since the broad Tea Party-driven spending cuts of 2010, the agency’s budget has been cut by 14 percent after inflation is considered, leading to sharply reduced staff, less enforcement of the tax laws and poor taxpayer service. The budget cutters are also trying to prevent the agency from performing its new job of collecting higher taxes on the...

NOTE: Links to webpages begging for end of quarter contributions have been removed. Which is a shame because the begging was truly pathetic. upchuck -- According to our records, here's what we have down for this exact email address: -- Supporter: upchuck -- High-powered lobbyist: No. -- Currently a Koch brother: No. -- Level of awesome: Dangerously high. -- Suggested action today: Keep on being awesome. OFA is about putting power back in the hands of real people. And corporations and shady interest groups (who aren't real people) are spending big to try to stop that from happening. If you...

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — This spring, new research out of Canada's McGill University that reviewed historical temperature records and geological data (ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments) concluded with 99% certainty that our current climate change predicament cannot be ascribed to natural cycles. But many are still dubious that man-made climate change is real. What's more, some skeptics even claim climate change is a money-making scam. In reality, you can follow the "dark money" to see how targeted funding is perpetuating these misconceptions -- even as climate change awareness and research groups lose funding.The article attempts to attack "skeptic"...

Here's the question of the day: Is there a climate bubble? In a New York Times op-ed, former treasury secretary Hank Paulson says there is. He calls it The Coming Climate Crash. For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up in the nation’s financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do. We’re making the same mistake today with climate change. We’re staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing more urgent...

The platoon was, an American military official would assert years later, “raggedy.” On their tiny, remote base, in a restive sector of eastern Afghanistan at an increasingly violent time of the war, they were known to wear bandannas and cutoff T-shirts. Their crude observation post was inadequately secured, a military review later found. Their first platoon leader, and then their first platoon sergeant, were replaced relatively early in the deployment because of problems. But the unit — Second Platoon, Blackfoot Company in the First Battalion, 501st Regiment — might well have remained indistinguishable from scores of other Army platoons in...

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Wednesday evening lashed out at “un-American” rush to judgment over the military record of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, following an all-senators briefing on the prisoner swap that led to the soldier’s release. One of the last senators to leave the two-hour meeting with administration officials, McCaskill said she hopes that eventually all the facts surrounding Bergdahl’s service are declassified “in fairness to the soldier and his family.” “What’s unfortunate is that many people have spoken out about this episode without having all the facts,” McCaskill said in an interview. “I’m not going to make a judgment....

Time magazine is rushing to President Obama´s side to defend him against the charge that he negotiated with terrorists to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The magazine tells readers that the maxim that America doesn´t negotiate with terrorists is more of a general ideal than a hard-bound policy and cites several other presidents who, the magazine claims, did negotiate with terrorists. Time notes that during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis Jimmy Carter negotiated with the Iranian Mullahs who took over Iran after deposing the Shah. Reagan also negotiated with the Mullahs, Time notes. Of course, in both cases

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers. Co-Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin sat down with “Top Line” to discuss their film, “Citizen Koch,” and why they say the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors, the Koch brothers, are such figures in American politics today. “Money – $100 billion now,” Deal said in explaining the Kochs’ influence. “When we started out making this film, their net worth was about $68...

The Taliban prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl might do some good, but fear and anger are getting in the way of a realistic appraisal.Richard Hofstadter opened his 1968 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," with this line: "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds." He continues, "Behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." One wonders...

‘Two, four, six, eight. Stop the violence. Stop the rape.” So chanted a group of Ohio University students calling themselves “f***rapeculture” at a protest a couple of years ago. Rape-culture activists have become a fixture on campuses throughout the country, and now, 55 colleges — including Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley — are under federal investigation for mishandling sexual-assault complaints. Some of my conservative/libertarian sisters have pointed out that the statistics on sexual assault are wildly inflated. Christina Hoff Sommers notes that the “one in five women are victims of rape” statistic that the Centers for Disease Control popularized (and that...

Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said Sunday that white Americans so disregard the ongoing existence of racism that they’re more likely to believe in ghosts. “More whites believe in ghosts than believe in racism,” Abdul-Jabbar, a former center for the Los Angeles Lakers, told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. ”That’s why we have shows like Ghostbusters and don’t have shows like Racistbuster. You know, it’s something that’s still part of our culture and people hold on to some of these ideas and practices just out of habit and saying that, well, that’s the way it always was. But things have...

....The Ballad of the Civil Rights Movement has long been liberals’ favorite bed-time story. Martin Luther King Day may be the only day of the year when they feel completely, unambiguously proud to be Americans. It’s hard to exaggerate how important this is to liberal political thinking. They are perpetually looking for new ways to recapture that high. Conservatives tend to miss this because we see the Civil Rights story as settled history. We’re all pleased to have sloughed off the bigotry of our ancestors. Of course we want people to be judged “by the content of their character” and...

I stand by every word of it. And it’s even worse today. Of the thousands of Clinton presidential records released to the public last week, one among them has received of the bulk of attention: a 332-page memo from 1995. The memo, which offers an in-depth analysis of the right-wing media, describes how conservative conspiracy theories about the Clintons passed from the fringes to the mainstream. (...) Let’s go all the way back to the summer of 1995. At the time, my then colleague (and current business partner) Mark Fabiani and I were working at the White House as lawyers...

Without mentioning reports that the man accused of shooting up a Jewish Community Center over the weekend was apparently a fan of the left's Max Blumenthal, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen exploited the murders to claim the American Right is more deadly than jihadists.

A new Facebook meme paints two leading Republicans as anti-science because of their alleged views of the age of the Earth. The Facebook group Being Liberal posted a picture March 10, 2014, featuring side-by-side images of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., looking somewhat sheepish. Bolded text under the images describes the senators’ views on the age of the Earth and the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to the meme, Rubio "believes Earth (is) 9,000 years old," and "humans hunted dinosaurs to extinction." Paul, the image proclaims, says the Earth is 10,000 years old and believes "God...

Barbara Boxer: Why no Viagra complaints? By: Tal Kopan March 25, 2014 11:28 AM EDT As the Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about the Obamacare mandate on birth control coverage, Sen. Barbara Boxer questioned why those up in arms about the requirement have no problem with most insurance covering Viagra. “I have never heard Hobby Lobby or any other corporation, I could be wrong, or any other boss complain that Viagra is covered in many insurance plans, practically all of them, or other kinds of things, you know, for men, which I won’t go into,” Boxer said Tuesday on MSNBC’s...

Val Vilott, president of the DC Abortion Fund, has responded to “ignorant” conservatives who have recently voiced outrage over the organization’s controversial coat hanger pendants. Before the passage of Roe v Wade (1973), some women seeking illegal abortions resorted to terminating their own pregnancies with coat hangers. While conservatives claim that reproductive rights advocates are insensitive and disgusting for making the horrors of illegal abortion a fashion statement, they apparently fail to realize that the policies they want to put in place may lead some women down that very path. Vilott writes: The coat hanger is a symbol of the...

RUSH: The Republican Party establishment... Let me set this up by going back to the 2012 presidential campaign. Remember when you learned that the Romney campaign, along with Republican establishment types, had put the word out that there was to be no criticism of Obama? In fact, I remember... I think I told you all this. A prospective Republican presidential candidate in 2010 or 2011 visited me. There was some confab here in Palm Beach, and this man called and wanted to come by and tell me what his plans were. So I said, "Sure, come on by Sunday morning."...

It’s a compelling story, isn’t it? A 7 year old’s birthday party invitation returned to the senders (two gay dads) with that note on it? The radio station posted that note on their Facebook page mid week this past week, and of course, readers went completely crazy over it, expressing their due outrage and offering their sympathy and support to the fathers. It spread like wildfire. The problem with the story, though, is that Steve Harper and Deanna (last name unknown) made up the entire thing, right down to the actual invitation, which they apparently hand-crafted. And they wrote this...

According to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, about 20 percent of the population is attracted to their own gender. That’s nearly double the usual estimates of about 10 percent. The authors explain that their methodology might have something to do with it: Participants were randomly assigned to either a “best practices method” that was computer-based and provides privacy and anonymity, or to a “veiled elicitation method” that further conceals individual responses. Answers in the veiled method preclude inference about any particular individual, but can be used to accurately estimate statistics about the population. Comparing the two...

This week, a report from the Congressional Budget Office acknowledged that ObamaCare would reduce full-time employment by 2.5 million over the next ten years. And that is on top of news that 92 million Americans who could be working are not. What a devastating assessment for the unemployed or underemployed, particular millenials seeking to transition from internships and part-time jobs to career-building full-time jobs. Yet the predictable spin from the White House and major media outlets is that this is good news, liberating workers from the chains of employment. To quote President Obama, from the 2008 campaign, "You can put...

The Washington Post recently published a quixotic editorial maintaining that the left has no deep-pocketed financiers like the right does in the much written about and thoroughly maligned Koch brothers. In its editorial, the paper laments that Democrat groups have no one like the Kochs. For the Post, Reid Wilson wrote that for "Democratic professionals who actually run campaigns, the thing that frustrates them most about the Koch brothers network is that there’s no real equivalent on their side."

John Kerry invoked his Vietnam War service to push back against an Israeli cabinet member who criticized his recent comments on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. During a security conference in Munich last weekend, Kerry suggested that if his Israeli-Palestinian peace effort fails, there could be serious consequences for Israel. “For Israel there is an increasing delegitimizing campaign that has been building up,” Kerry said, without condemning the effort. “People are very sensitive to it. There are talks of boycotts and other kinds of things.” In response, Israel’s economy minister Naftali Bennett harshly criticized Kerry’s failure to speak out against the...

The next time you hear someone dispute that human activity is destabilizing our climate, remember this pie chart. It represents geochemist James Lawrence Powell's review of 2,258 peer-reviewed scientific articles about climate change, written by 9,136 authors, published between Nov. 12, 2012 and December 31, 2013. Of all those hundreds of papers and thousands of researchers, Powell found one article, authored by a single scientist, that attributed climate change to something other than human actions: "The Role of Solar Activity in Global Warming," by S.V. Avakyan, appearing in the Herald of the Russian Academy of Science, Vol. 83, No. 3....